Fall 2007 Alumnae Quarterly Web Extra

Learn More: The Full Interview with E.B. White’s Granddaughter

Martha White with her grandfather, E.B. White; courtesy of Martha White

Martha White ’77, granddaughter of E.B. White and editor of Letters of E. B. White, Revised Edition, reflects on her famous grandfather, his work, and her role in preserving his literary heritage.

Quarterly: Approximately how many letters are in the new collection? How many were there to choose from? What were you actually reading when you went through his papers in preparation for the book?

Martha White: There are 685 pages of letters in the Revised Edition of Letters of E.B. White and the final seventy pages are previously unpublished letters from my grandfather’s last ten years. Some letters from the previous edition were omitted to make room for the new ones, and a few significant new letters were added to the earlier years, as well as many new photographs. In all, there are well over a hundred previously unpublished letters, including ones to Sen. Edmund Muskie, John Updike, Jill Krementz, Garrison Keillor, Andy Rooney (CBS), Helen (Mrs. Scott) Nearing, White’s biographer Scott Elledge, Washington Post political columnist David Broder, Mark Singer, William Shawn, and the Hotel Algonquin. There is also a terrific new foreword written by John Updike.

Most of the letters I read were either originals, kept by close family and friends, or Xerox copies kept four floors below ground in the Cornell University archives in Ithaca, N.Y. White always kept copies and first drafts of his letters, but rarely used carbon paper. The letters certainly number in the thousands, but my job was simplified by the intention to focus primarily on the last ten years. Both of my grandparents, E.B. and Katharine White (she was a New Yorker editor) had gone through most of the earlier letters themselves, before the book was first published, so it was easy to trust their editorial judgment on those.

Quarterly: Can you give me some examples of the letters’ topics, to show the breadth of the collection?

Martha White: The original Letters book came out in 1976, well before White died in 1985. The letters up to that point cover a wide spectrum of topics, from White’s early childhood in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and summers in Belgrade Lake, Maine; to his travels across country in a Model T; to early days at the New Yorker magazine; and later, his work on Stuart Little and the other books. There are youthful embarrassments, ill-fated and lifelong romances, a defense of the Constitution, a note on how to end a sentence with five prepositions, and more.

During the final decade (the new part of the book), there was an interesting deluge of letters in response to the first Letters book; his wife of nearly forty-eight years died (in 1977); he published her gardening book, Onward and Upward in the Garden and Linda Davis published her biography, Onward and Upward; White won a Pulitzer for his collected works; and Scott Elledge was working closely with White on the E.B. White biography, which came out in 1984. Oh, and the Algonquin Hotel gave him a mattress! All of those events, and much more, are covered in the new book. There’s even a martini recipe.

Quarterly: As an accomplished writer in your own right, do you ever feel the “weight” of the White literary legacy (in either a positive, inspirational way, or in a negative “I’ll always be compared to my famous grandfather” way)? Do you ever feel him hovering over your word processor while you’re composing?

Martha White: Because I am a writer and editor myself, I tend not to mention my connection to my grandfather, because I prefer to be judged on my own merits. These last two years, I have had to be more forthright, because of the Letters book readings and other publicity, but I intend to go back to my old ways soon. I don’t feel the White literary legacy as a weight, but rather as an unusual privilege. It’s not every child who gets her letters to the grandparents returned with red pencil corrections! Better yet, my grandmother reviewed children’s books for years, so she had an interesting library.

My grandfather was never a hoverer, but if he were, he’d be more apt to hover over a chick or gosling than a word processor. When I kept a small flock of hens myself, I was grateful for the knowledge he’d passed along. When I write, I’m glad for Elements of Style. My autographed copy, “with love from stylish old Grandpa,” says I “can use all the needless words you want to.” It’s a comfort to notice that his sentence ends with a preposition. It’s a “question of ear,” as he said, and I can only hope that some of that may have rubbed off on me.

Quarterly: I’ve read that you grew up a mile down the road from your grandfather’s farm in Maine and that you were aware that he had this other, city life, but basically ignored that and did “farm things” with him. Is this accurate?

Martha White: My family lived about a mile from my grandparents’ farm, so we visited frequently. We often had Sunday dinner there, or holiday gatherings (pity the goose!), and my brothers and I were called upon for help with farm chores, or gardening, or stacking wood. Collecting the eggs was a favorite chore, but more often we were weeding or deadheading my grandmother’s perennial beds.

In addition to the farm animals, my grandfather always had dogs and also tended to adopt baby birds that had fallen from their nests—my father had a crow, as a boy, and I recall a baby robin who was insatiable—so that was interesting. I kept ducks, as a child, and my grandfather once came to the rescue with a broody hen, when the nesting mother duck at our pond was killed. The hen managed to hatch out the ducklings, but then proceeded to have a nervous breakdown when the ducklings headed into the pond. My grandfather was fascinated by the whole process.

My grandfather was also an avid sailor and, late in life, had a sloop built by my father. I was about twelve when I smashed the bottle at the launching to name her the Martha and my brothers and I were occasionally called upon as crew. The boat still sails in Penobscot Bay.

Quarterly: Now that the book is out, what’s your continuing role as manager of White Literary LLC?

Martha White: As manager for the White Literary LLC, I handle permission requests for essay or other reprints, new editions of the books still in print, cover art, and any other matters related to the E.B. White copyrighted material. It’s pretty interesting work, really.

Right now, the (Strunk & White) Elements of Style has just come out in a beautiful new edition illustrated by Maira Kalman and she has been working on an opera based on it. Meanwhile, One Man’s Meat is being published in China, there are Vietnamese and Thai offers on Charlotte’s Web, and an art installation of “Here is New York” (an essay written in 1949) is up in lights at the World Trade Center because of an uncanny passage that seems to predict the 9/11 tragedy: “The city, for the first time in its long history, is destructible. A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York City now; in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headlines of the latest edition.”

Through the labor of self-discovery, we learned the value of supporting one another, of listening instead of always speaking, of standing up for ourselves and others, of seeing each glitch in our path as an opportunity for a new beginning. Along the way we became women together, every one of us a strong, unique, and empowered individual. — Sara Rose Curtin ’02, student commencement address, 2002